Mini-Campaign: Tellyportas

The next scenario in our campaign surrounded a mysterious tellyporta pad that had been discovered deep in the desert.  Built long ago by a crazy Mek, the pad connected to another one far from the skid in an unexplored region rich with scrap.  Naturally, all four mobs were eager to plunder this new source of riches.

Naturally, all four mobs were eager to plunder this new source of riches.

Marvolork's bikers were the first through the pad, though they were followed closely by Chad, who brought his whole mob through the tellyporta.

Meanwhile, Marvolork, who had acquired a spiffy new suit of mega armor, charged toward Urzig's mob, determined to keep the other Gorkers from reaching the pad.

Not wanting to miss out on all the scrap, I sent Abby Jr. and Shifty through the tellyporta.  The speedy little trakk tore out of the immaterium just inches from Chad's trukk and flew off toward unexplored territory.  Unfortunately, they didn't make it far from the pad before Chad's entire mob opened fire on them, immobilizing the trakk and dashing any hopes of quickly grabbing some scrap.

Back on the near side of the pad, Marvolork and Urzig, once again, had demolished each other's vehicle in a head-on collision.  The resulting carnage would cause both mobs to bottle within a few turns.

In an unexpected turn of events, Chad was knocked from his trukk onto the pad and tellyported back to the other side, where Grizwoad and his mob were waiting.  Although Chad's thick armor and Nobby toughness would allow him to survive the ensuing hail of dakka, he became trapped in the tellyporta, going back and forth between the two pads and perpetually being shot to pieces before he could actually stand and run off the pad.

Never ones to fret while their boss is getting the tar beat out of himself, the rest of Chad's mob continued to cruise the deserts on the far side of the pad, shooting down the last of Marvolork's bikers and gathering as much scrap as they could.

Unfortunately for the overconfident Gorkers, just because the scrap was uncontested, it didn't mean that it was safe.  One pile of scrap happened to be right on the lair of a giant desert scorpion that was eager to make a meal out of Chad's boyz.

With most of the other mobs now fleeing the table, I decided that it was probably safe to send another vehicle through the tellyporta...

...I was wrong.

The trakk exploded during transport, flinging its occupants through the air and emerging in a heap on the far side.  The smoldering wreck essentially blocked any other vehicles from using the pads and ended any hopes of the adventure being profitable for anyone.  I believe Chad's mob ended up winning, though I don't know that anyone did much better than break even after all the repairs.

So, in summary, everything exploded, everybody basically lost to varying degrees, and it was one of the most entertaining scenarios of the campaign.  I can't wait to try it again.

Mini-Campaign: Rescue Mission

We were finally able to finish our mini-campaign back in June.  Since we ended the first session on a cliffhanger with Grizwoad and his Morkers taking Chad's gunner hostage after da Big Race, the first game of this session was a rescue mission with Chad and his boyz attempting to free their comrade from Grizwoad's fort.

Unfortunately, the fort was one of the many things I wasn't able to get finished in time for the campaign, so Grizwoad's mob had taken up temporary residence on top of da Kop while they waited for their new lair to be completed.

When the Gorkers struck, the only mobsters defending the camp were Grizwoad, Slash, and Snikshok, my shooty grot.  Despite being outnumbered, the Morkers were confident that they could deal with Chad's trukk from the safety of their makeshift fortress.

As soon as the trukk got close to the camp, the Gorkers let loose with a barrage of stikkbombs that pummeled the entire Kop, taking Grizwoad out of action and even knocking out the tiny grot cowering on the far side of the defenses.

Slash quickly rushed over to block the Gorkers from scaling the rocky walls of their camp, but a second volley of stikkbombs made short work of the burly Runtherd.  By the time Chad's boys entered the camp, the only remaining defender was a somewhat dazed grot, desperately trying to stall for time.

Fortunately for him, the smoldering remains of their temporary stronghold had caught the attention of the rest of the mob, who came rushing back to repel the invaders.  The two smaller trakks arrived first and charged toward the trukk with guns blazing.

Wasting no time, Chad's boyz released their captured comrade and made a break toward the open desert, climbing down the rear cliffs on the side of the mesa furthest from the approaching trakks.

This time, however, the tables have turned and it's Chad's boys who have to try and stall the trakks long enough for the rest of the mob to get away.  The trukk, up against a wall of solid rock, has no room to maneuver and gets shot to pieces.

In a valiant attempt to slow the trakks' pursuit, one of Chad's bikers rushed in and dropped an oil slick right in the path of Toast and his flamecar, only to be hit at point blank range by the trakk's skorcha.

Just as it seemed that the biker's bold maneuver might have bought the fleeing Gorkers the time they needed to escape, Spike and the big trakk came around the other corner of the Kop, cutting off their escape and ending the rescue mission in a hail of dakka.  Grizwoad would keep his prisoner and Chad would have to hire a new gunner.

Even More Gubbinz

The last month or two has been kind of crazy for me, and while I haven't managed to get much posted, I have managed to get a bit done here and there.  First and foremost, I finally managed to get all the gubbinz for my big trakk finished.

It's kind of hard to tell from the pictures, but my trakk is currently fitted with a reinforced ram, armor plates, a big grabba, shoutas, spikes (extra spiky), boarding planks, boosta rokkits, and a mine layer.  While there are still a few other gubbinz like a turning hook that I don't have modeled, these are all the ones that I have any current plans for using on this vehicle (though I also have a wrecka ball that I can swap out for my grabba if I feel particularly smashy).

As you can see, I constructed this batch of gubbinz from a fairly eclectic mix of parts and materials.  Each one could probably merit having its own post, so I won't try to get to all of them right now.  Plus, I still have to recap the end of the campaign (though sadly, most of the gubbinz were only half-painted at the time).

Hopefully the first campaign post will be up soon!

One More Squig Conversion

One final entry for Squig Week, a nice toothy squighound based on the squig from Grukk Facerippa. 

I painted this guy in the same way as my other squigs.  Washing the model with Agrax Earthshade made him look really brown and splotchy, but a nice coat of Bloodletter did wonders, making the red stronger and mellowing out the extreme shadows that he got on his skin.  It did tone down some of the highlights as well, so I went back over a few places again to brighten them back up.

The conversion was pretty simple, just adding some goggles to the model to match the rest of my mob.  I used glass beads for the lenses instead of molding them from greenstuff, which I think turned out pretty good.  There was also a pretty big ridge where the face attached to the body, which I was mostly able to hide with greenstuff.

Since I think our current house rules only allow slavers to take squighounds, I officially have more squigs than I can take in my mob, which means it's probably time to move on to getting my trakk put back together in time for the next game.  So I guess Slash can have his choice of squig next time he's able to buy one, or we're going to have a few more squigs for the next time we try running the Squigpede scenario.

So here's my current stock of finished squigs.  As I mentioned before, I have a couple more sitting around in various stages of completion so hopefully I'll slowly work through my backlog.

Now on to some gubbinz...

Targeting Squig

The next squiggly beast for my Gorkamorka mob is ready to go.  This little beastie is based on the standard plastic targeting squig from the Flash Gitz sprue, though he didn't seem smiley or toothy enough for my Morkers, so I gave him a pair of tusks and a big grin and now he fits in great.

The conversion wasn't terribly difficult.  The tusks are from some Space Marine lightning claws, which I then sculpted his big underbite around.  Fairly simple, but I like the way she turned out.

I painted this squig the same way I painted my others, though the eyeball gave me a lot of trouble.  The eye itself turned out great, but the little targeting reticle ended up giving me a lot of grief.  The first time around, I just drew it on with an ink pen, which gave me a nice thin, straight line that looked great.  The only problem was that as soon as I tried to put some gloss on it, it smeared all over and I had to repaint the whole eye.  Of course, having done it perfectly the first time, I ended up splodging it several times with a brush.  In the end, the center of the eye had so many coats of paint that it was starting to look like it was wearing a contact lens, which I guess is as good an explanation as any as to how these things supposedly work.  In the end, the only real complaint I have is that since the black lines are a bit thicker now, it kind of breaks up the gradient and makes it look really yellow in the middle and really orange on the outside, rather than a smooth transition.  Were I to do it again, I might try having the whole center of the eye solid yellow with the washes only around the edges, but I'm still quite pleased with the finished look.

I decided to give this squig to Shifty, my Kannon-toting spanner boy.  I removed the boss pole from his backpack to add the squig perch, though I also made some modifications to his kannon, adding an ammo feed to the bottom.  I wanted the ammo to look a bit like the rounds from the old Ork Biker autocannons, but a bit smaller.  I got a bunch of random ammo clips from the Flash Gitz sprues, but the ones I managed to find were all either too similar to normal shoota ammo (which I removed to convert his kannon) or were too weird looking.

In the end, I ended up just building my own rounds out of plasticard tubes and the tips of some plastic golf tees, which were rather difficult to work with.  They're still a bit on the large side, as the cartridges are as big as or slightly larger than the action of the gun, but they look good and orky.

Also, since I how have two removable squig perches, I have the option of swapping them around...

...which could be handy if Grizwoad ends up getting a bunch of good shooting skills again.

Nob's Best Friend

My next squig for Squig Week is finally ready to go.  This little guy is an attack squig for Grizwoad, my Nob, though he would also make an excellent mimic squig or squig parrot, since I made this guy to sit on his shoulder.

This guy is based on the little attack squig from the nobz sprue, though I always thought that he looked kind of weird sitting on his perch atop that really tall back pole, so I chopped him off and made it look like his perch was bolted directly onto my nob's shoulder pad.  I also shaved off his hair and gave him some bony spikes, which I liked much better.  Finally, I gave him a pair of goggles just like my squighound.

It was kind of fiddly work with such a tiny model, so instead of modeling lenses in greenstuff like I have in the past, his goggles are actually made from tiny glass beads.  My first time using them, but I like how it turned out.

I also did a bit of touch-up work on Grizwoad while I was at it.  I repainted his big choppa using better paints, and although the streaky texture from the other paint still shows through a bit if you look really hard, the new coat (actually more like two coats, as I kept splodging) is definitely an improvement.  Attaching the squig, fortunately, wasn't too hard, as his left shoulder pad already had a couple of bullet holes in it.  I just drilled one of them out so it goes all the way to his pelvis, and now he's got a perfect squig mount that blends in perfectly.

On to the next squiggly beast...

Squig Week!

Greetings everyone, and welcome to Squig Week!  One of the additions we made to our house rules for Gorkamorka was the inclusion of a squig market where players could go and buy little squiggly beasts for their gangers.  Thus far, no one has used them, because almost no one has any squig models, other than the ones we used for the Squigpede in our first campaign two years ago.  So in the spirit of testing our house rules, I've been slowly acquiring squigs off ebay for the last few months, though this is the first one I've actually managed to convert and paint up.  There's no way I'm going to get all of them built and painted this week (some are still on the sprues), but I'm going to see how many I can get ready for our upcoming game.

Even with his cool shades, this guy is easily recognizable as one of the old metal Warhammer Fantasy squigs.  I thought this happy-looking guy would make a nice addition to my cheerful Morkers, so I gave him a pair of goggles to protect him from the desert sands.  The original model is designed for a slotta base, so I chopped off the tab and pinned him to some interesting looking scrap.  I like how the broken conduit full of cables turned out, though in hindsight, I could have made the break in the pipe a bit more jagged to show off the cables a bit more. Still, I'm quite pleased how it turned out.

Painting my squighound involved a bit of trial and error.  My usual red scheme using Agrax Earthshade made all the little recesses by his scales way too dark, so I decided to try using a glaze for the first time.  A nice coat of Bloodletter calmed down the crazy contrast I was getting and gave his skin a good strong shade of red.  I also decided to make his spikes look extra jagged by painting the lines on his horns, rather than just using a shade like I usually do.  It took way too long on this spiky guy but I like the finished effect.

So now Slash, my runtherd finally has some help keeping the grots in line.  Now I'll just have to see if I can save up enough teef to actually take him in a campaign...